


Child of the Many

by TheSleepingOne (SleepingNebula)



Series: I've Served My Time In Hell [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Canon-Typical Violence, Found Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:47:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24151546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepingNebula/pseuds/TheSleepingOne
Summary: Ahsoka’s side of the story for I’ve Served My Time In HellShe may never have become a real JEDI, but she spent enough time at the Academy to pick up a few tricks.  And now she’s going to need them, to keep both herself and Anakin alive, when they find themselves captured by an old enemy, one that was supposedly vanquished in the last war.Spectres emerge at every turn and Ahsoka is beginning to think things may not be all they seem.[Or, Ahsoka finds out that the galaxy really, really isn't a simple place to live]
Series: I've Served My Time In Hell [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1742836
Comments: 1
Kudos: 81





	1. Chapter 1

“Drop your weight more,” Anakin insists.

“Skyguy, if I drop my weight any more my butt will be on the floor.”

“Not if you do it _properly_.”

Ahsoka sighs and readjusts her position minutely to satisfy him because she _did_ ask for his help. It makes her thighs burn but it does allow her to get a better angle – she’s never going to have the height advantage on Anakin, but being below his centre of mass does give her an opening into several of his pressure points that she can exploit.

“I get the feeling,” she gripes, “that whoever developed Djem So never missed a meal a day in their life.” It’s not the most economical of forms when it comes to conserving energy. But then it is all about explosive uses of power and using aggression to gain supremacy over the opponent.

“Hey, if you want to be stuck with Soresu for the rest of your life, be my guest.”

Soresu, at least, doesn’t require the same level of exertion because it’s all about defence and endurance. But her aim is to one day beat Obi-Wan and she can’t do that by matching his defences because she knows she will always be the one to tire first. He can fight indefinitely, she cannot. He wasn’t known as the Master of Soresu for nothing back at the Academy.

“Shut up and fight me.”

“Don’t get snippy with me, little one.”

He says it good naturedly which is completely at odds with the driving attack that comes next and she blinks from her position on her back looking up at the sky, air driven from her lungs by her sudden shift in perspective.

“Right,” Anakin says, stepping back, “as far as technique goes, I’m going to say that could use a little improvement.”

“You didn’t give me a chance to show you my technique.”

“Then make me,” he challenges. “Also, keep your guard up and your weight low.”

Ahsoka pushes herself to her feet and mock bows in her direction. “ _Yes_ _Master_ ,” she intones, like they do in all those martial arts movies she and her friends back at the Academy used to rip to shreds on their movie nights.

He picks up a stone and throws it in her direction.

“Is that a more advanced move?” she asks innocently.

He charges at her instead of answering and this time she’s ready. He tries to barge his shoulder into her chest to knock her off her feet and she meets his force with her own give – like a tree bending in the wind so it doesn’t break (at least that’s how Obi-Wan had described it to her) – she twists to one side, hooking her foot under Anakin’s and using his own momentum as the drive to trip him up. It’s most definitely something Obi-Wan taught her, and not what Anakin is trying to teach her, but she sees the chance and takes it. Anakin is far too good to go over completely and twists free, but comes up off balance and she uses the opening to ram her knee into places he’d rather she didn’t.

He drops like the stone.

“That,” he wheezes, “was not Djem So.”

“Sure it was.”

They’re out the front of the farmhouse, making the most of the last light of the day while they wait for Obi-Wan to return. It goes unsaid that he should be back by now, but they have an agreement; twenty-four hours before they send out search and rescue. Which means they have to wait until first light before they go looking for him. She isn’t worried just yet, because she trusts Obi-Wan and she knows he can look after himself, and it’s not even that late.

But she also knows his knack for getting himself into trouble.

There’s another reason they’re out here too; rations are running low and they’ve made a collective decision to cut down to half-portions. Starvations rations. She’s hungry and she needs a distraction from the ache in her belly. She can’t even grumble about it because she knows both Obi-Wan and Anakin put aside some of their own food for her, and she has to pretend she doesn’t notice because they’ll only worry otherwise. It also means she can’t complain about it, because they’ll give her _more_.

Anakin straightens his back with a wince as he stands, shooting her looks of betrayal as he limps over to the water pump and sticks his head underneath it, using the hand that isn’t protecting himself to pull the lever. Ahsoka tries not to smirk because he looks like a dog that’s taken an unwanted bath when he’s done and she knows if she points that out to him he’ll resume their spar.

Threepio trots out from the shade of the house, tongue hanging out as he pants, making a beeline for the pump.

“You thirsty, boy?”

He trots passed, into Anakin’s arms and looks up expectantly.

“Alright, alright,” Anakin mumbles and pulls the lever.

But Threepio suddenly isn’t interested. His head is cocked sideways, in the direction of the driveway. A low growl begins in the back of his throat and develops into a full snarl of warning-danger-terror.

Anakin’s demeanour changes instantly as his hackles rise. There’s the faint sound of a car in the distance and both of them know what that means. Nobody has a car these days, not unless they’re with the raiders, because nobody can afford to expend the energy it requires to find the fuel to keep one running, not over finding food. And it’s coming their way.

“Ahsoka, get into the house.”

She doesn’t need to be told twice. Anakin is right behind her and he swings the door shut behind the three of them, looking around for something to barricade it with. There’s nothing but the old sideboard to hand, and together they push it across the door. She reaches over to pull the dead bolt across for good measure and they retreat into the kitchen.

There isn’t really anywhere to hide, but they do their best. Ahsoka crouches underneath the table and Anakin moves to stand behind the kitchen door, keeping Threepio close to his heel. It won’t stand up to a party entering the house, but nobody can see them through the kitchen window should they look in. She prays silently that the raiders don’t bother to even come that close.

The car gets closer and closer and then she can hear it come to a stop even if she can’t see it. Many feet drop to the ground and indistinct shouting drowns out the birds that call from the fields. She can hear Anakin murmuring something that sounds like a prayer, but it’s in Huttese and she only catches one word in every three.

She closes her eyes and hopes that Obi-Wan returns soon. He’d know what to do.

“Look around, they can’t have gone far.”

Then they’re at the door and the sideboard shudders under their efforts to get it open. It sounds like they’re trying ram it, which means they’re trying to get _inside_ , and Ahsoka peers out from under the edge of the tablecloth to meet Anakin’s eyes. He puts a finger to his lips and looks around slightly manically. There isn’t any cover, nothing practical anyway. Hiding isn’t going to do either of them any good, and their eyes fall onto the table at the same time.

She crawls out quickly, wincing at the sound of splintering wood as the door begins to yield.

“Quick,” Anakin whispers, as if she’s not doing exactly that.

They shove the chairs away and together, carefully lower the table on its side. The scrape of wood on wood – the sideboard being violently pushed aside – is the only warning they get as the door implodes and they both duck behind their cover. Anakin reaches over to squeeze her shoulder in a slightly unreassuring display of reassurance and Threepio whimpers.

“They’re here somewhere,” someone growls and the sound is tortured by some kind of voice box.

Doors open and Ahsoka can visibly see their time ticking away. The last grain of sand falls into the bottom of glass, and the door is opened. She can’t see who it is because she’s resolutely not looking.

“In here!”

Anakin snarls and grabs one of the chairs behind them and hurls it in their direction. It hits the doorframe and the side of the raider’s face and it brings a hail of bullets in their direction in answer. She gasps and crouches lower, hugging her knees. Anakin swears in a way she _knows_ would give Obi-Wan an aneurism, and the idiot throws another chair. More bullets slam the table into her back and pierce the cupboard doors opposite, and then there’s a searing, burning pain in her arm and her vision flashes white.

“ _Ahsoka_!”

The static recedes to gift her with Anakin’s fear and fury. “I’m fine,” she snaps, because his hold on her arm is not helping. “We need to get out of here.”

“Working on it.”

She shakes as she looks at her arm and does her best not to think too hard about it. It’s not fatal by any means – _yet_ , her traitorous mind supplies, because infection and blood loss are nobody’s friend – but the bullet has punctured the flesh of her arm and blood dribbles down her skin and onto the floor. She allows herself to repeat Anakin’s curses to make herself feel better, and then ducks lower at the next hail of bullets.

They need to get out of here, and they need to do so soon. She works through all of their possible exits in her mind and turns to Anakin. “Throw the next chair through the window,” she grits because it _hurts_.

He looks confused for a second and then catches on and turns to grab another only to find there aren’t any more. _Fuck_. There’s nothing else to hand either, besides the tin kettle on the stove, but she doesn’t think that’s going to be enough. Anakin throws all his weight against one of the table legs and she worries he’s injured too and has lost enough blood to lose his mind, but then it splits, falling off and she sees what he’s trying to do.

“Cover me,” Anakin tells her and even through the pain she manages to give him an incredulous look.

 _With what exactly_ , she’s about to ask and then she spies the kettle and sighs. She’s up and on her feet before she can think twice, and then she’s grabbing it and dropping back to the floor before anyone can work out what she’s trying to do.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Ready.”

She twists onto her knees for a better angle and throws the kettle into the doorway with her good arm. It’s not much, but it’s enough of a distraction of Anakin to aim better and there’s the sound of shattering glass.

“Go!” Anakin shouts and she tries to do what he does – not think about all the things that could possibly go wrong – and follows him as he vaults over the top of the table.

Someone fires outside the house, through the window, at the same time as several of the raiders finally make it through the doorway and she realises in that second that they are most definitely not making it out of the house. Instinctively she drops to the floor, blinking away the black spots that dot her vision. She can’t see Anakin or Threepio, and she doesn’t have time to worry about it because someone grabs her hair by one of her buns, dragging her to her feet and she screams.

She reaches up to grab at the hand and relieve the pressure, the way the Academy taught her to when someone grabs her hair, but her injured arm isn’t responding and she can’t get a proper hold. She kicks the legs behind her instead, and then her entire world shifts sideways, and she’s thrown to the floor. It’s Anakin, she realises, because he’s decided to tackle her attacker and it seems neither of them were expecting it. Her scalp burns because the raider didn’t let go as they fell and she rolls out of the their sphere of damage as he and Anakin start to wrestle. A clump of her hair is thrown to the side as the attacker scrambles to deal with the ferocity of her brother.

She shuffles backwards, until her back bumps into the fireplace, trying to get out of Anakin’s way as he grapples with the raider. More of them pour into the room, but they don’t dare fire on their comrade, and instead stand back, seemingly amused by the turn of events.

One of them, their gas mask painted with thick white stripes across one eye, cocks their head considering. “Change of plan, I want them alive. The East Barracks will take them, the boss is always complaining we don’t have enough recruits.”

Ahsoka’s heart hammers in her chest, but if they’re wanted alive then it buys them time for Obi-Wan to come and find them – and she has every confidence he will come for them. Panicked, she realises he’ll have no idea where they’re being taken. Anakin pummels the raider in the face and the man swears and draws a knife.

“ _Alive_ ,” the lead raider repeats.

“Oh, he’ll be alive,” the other raider snarls and dives at her brother.

She shuffles further out of the arc of the knife and gasps when that makes her arm flare up. Soot coats her fingers from the fireplace and that gives her a frantic idea. Obi-Wan will come back to find them gone, but she can give him a head start in finding them. She scrawls into the ash behind her, not looking at what she’s doing in case it gives the game away. The clump of hair lies by her feet and anger bubbles in her chest when she sees one of her silka braids has come away with it, but that gives her another idea. She drops it next to her writing, hoping it’ll make Obi-Wan take notice of her parting note.

Then Threepio decides to join the fight. He lunges, teeth bared at the raider and sinks them into the raider’s leg. They howl in fury as Anakin picks himself up from the floor, and then they twist to stab Threepio in the flank. Ahsoka can’t help but shout in protest, and the effort makes her vision dance, and the thundercloud of emotions that grace Anakin’s face makes her draw back in fright along with everyone else.

Anakin grabs the table leg from where it’s rebounded off the windowsill and hits the raider around the back of the head with it. The raider slumps to the floor and Ahsoka is horrified at the way their eyes roll into the back of their head.

Nobody needs to tell her he’s dead.

The pool of rapidly expanding blood does that on its own.

Several things happen at once; the raiders surge forwards, converging on Anakin with a fury he can’t hope to combat, not against so many. One of them rams the butt of their weapon into his forehead and he crumples like the raider he killed (self-defence, it was _self-defence_ ). Another steps forwards towards her, but she can’t take her eyes off Anakin – she thinks he’s still breathing, just unconscious – and levers her to her feet. Threepio is chased out of the room by a warning shot at his feet and she whimpers on his behalf, but she’s in no position to stand unaided, not even when the lead raider points his weapon directly between her eyes.

There’s intelligence there she thinks, he’s not one of the mindless grunts around him. “Was it you two in the store this afternoon?”

She blinks in confusion at the question.

“Did you kill my sister in the store this afternoon?” the raider repeats, spitting his words through his teeth.

The mask only makes him look more unstable and she swallows, unsure how to answer. Clearly, it wasn’t her, but it might have been Obi-Wan and it would be better not to give away the simple fact that he exists because then the raiders will go looking for him and that will make rescue all the more difficult.

“Yes,” she decides.

The raiders snarls and for a second Ahsoka thinks he might shoot her after all, but then he’s dragging her across the room and throwing her into the arms of another raider.

“Get them on the truck. Someone deal with the body.”

She’s dragged out into the hall and in a momentary lapse of balance she falls against the wall, stumbling over her own feet. The raider pushes her forwards, towards the ruins of the door, his fingers digging into her arm forcing her to bite back a scream. The light outside is overwhelmingly bright and makes her head hurt, and she shies away with no relief. Then she’s roughly dropped in the back of the truck and Anakin’s limp form is thrown in after her. The sound of a single shot rings out and that’s the last thing she hears before the darkness takes her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some dire revelations come to light

Consciousness greets her with immense pain under her temples, and she bites her lip in the effort to stop herself from groaning. When she opens her eyes, the room is mercifully dark, curtains of thick fabric pulled across the bank of windows on the end wall. Rows of beds – all empty, but one – line both walls. None of the frames match and neither does the bedding. Even the little bedside tables are different. It’s like someone’s tried to recreate a hospital ward, but was hampered by the end of the world, colour blindness and a complete lack of sense for interior décor.

Ahsoka risks sitting up to look around. The room’s only other occupant lies prone and unmoving, and doesn’t seem in any position to disturb her. Dancing in the streaks of light that break through the curtains, she can see fine specks of dust floating lazily and without concern. But despite that, the place is as sanitary as it could possibly be without the aid of modern chemicals. The varnish on the desk next to her bed has been scrubbed off with a rigorous ferocity, and the floorboards would shine if they could.

There’s a creak and she turns to see the door open. A tall woman with severely braided black hair, wrapped with bands of leather, enters the room carrying a bowl.

“Good, you’re awake.”

Ahsoka finds herself nodding, as she grasps at the memories of the farmhouse and-

“ _Anakin_?” she asks somewhat desperately.

The woman sighs and places the bowl on the table by her bed. It contains some sort of beige broth that smells a little bit like brine and the ocean. “He woke up a little before you. He’s fine,” she adds hastily, anticipating her next question, “just a headache and some bruising. He’s with the others now.”

She daren’t ask. “The others?”

“The other recruits.”

 _Recruits_. That’s right, she remembers the raider promising as much.

“I take it you’re Ahsoka?”

Ahsoka nods.

“Your brother made quite the fuss about you.” She sounds almost approving.

Ahsoka lifts her chin up in answer as the woman moves to the side of the bed, taking her wrist to check her pulse and running through a series of vitals checks. After a moment the woman steps back.

“You lost a lot of blood, but the shot was clean and I’ve sewn it up. Try not to do anything too strenuous for a while and it should heal just fine.”

Reflexively she looks down at her arm, but it’s been heavily bandaged in white linen. It’s stiff and sore, but it doesn’t burn any more, and it feels more like she’s run a marathon than been in a gun fight (though a gun fight makes it sound far less one sided than it was). She no longer feels so lightheaded – just the headache on that front – even if the prospect of having to move anywhere makes her want to curl back up into a ball.

“Thank you,” she says cautiously.

“I wouldn’t thank me yet,” the woman says ominously and with no small amount of self-depreciation. It’s an odd thing to say and does nothing to put her at ease, but then she supposes it wasn’t mean to.

It prompts Ahsoka to take advantage. “Where am I exactly?”

“This,” the woman proclaims with surprising bitterness, “is the training camp for the what’s left of the CIS.”

She freezes. She may never have been a _real_ JEDI, but she’s spent enough time in the Academy to know all about the Separatists and the CIS. She’s grown up in the atmosphere of the War; between the JEDI and the Republic’s most decorated general adopting her, it would have been hard to avoid and it’s not like she’s led one of the most sheltered of lives. Obi-Wan may not talk about it much, but he lets slip more than he thinks with his actions, and he mentions enough in passing that she knows more than most about the gritty details and long suffering consequences of the War. And Cody- well, there had been (and still _are_ ) plenty of people in her life effected by it directly for her to know the true extent of how bad the CIS surviving could possibly be.

And that’s before she even considers the SITH.

But they all died – the Republic, the Separatists, the JEDI and the SITH – they are no more. The war concluded with the apocalypse; it was _won_ by the apocalypse. The world _ended_ without paying heed to the petty squabbles of nations. Nobody is naïve enough to assume that hostilities ceased because of it, but they had assumed that the sheer volume of death and destruction had negated that fact. There shouldn’t be enough of either side left for the War to continue.

But remnants of both sides remain, it seems.

“ _What_?”

The woman looks at her with sympathy as she picks up the bowl and presses it firmly into Ahsoka’s hands. “Eat, get your strength back. You’re underweight.”

“That’s not exactly my fault,” she mutters.

It’s warm and it’s food so she doesn’t complain, even at the slightly gelatinous way it slips off the spoon. Though she does scrunch her nose at just quite how deceptively _salty_ it is.

If this is the domain of the CIS then that puts and awful lot of their recent experiences into perspective. But it’s also incredibly, incredibly worrying. During the war, there had been an awful lot of actual _fighting_ for a feud that was supposed to be purely ideological, but it had never reached as far as Coruscant. If the Separatists are here, now, under the very nose of –

She stops. Who exactly would they be sneaking passed? There’s no Republic left to oppose them.

Which means they’ve won, she realises. Under the cloak of unmitigated disaster, the Separatists have taken the capital of the Republic unhindered.

And she wonders if that’s why the response to the disaster was so inadequate. The Separatists are not below genocide or manufacturing an epidemic or famine. She doesn’t see it as that much of a stretch in belief to say they abandoned civilians to the chaos of calamity to take power more efficiently.

“Is…” she tries to think of the most important questions to ask, while she still can, so that when Obi-Wan finds them she can warn him. “Are the real Separatists here or are they a splinter group?”

The woman looks at her for a moment, assessing how much to say. Ahsoka tries her best to look mature and not in pain, and less like a frightened child. She doesn’t know how successful she is, but the woman gifts her with a small nod. “Dooku is here,” she says by way of explanation.

The real Separatists _and_ the real SITH.

She’s glad Obi-Wan doesn’t know yet and she resents the fact that she’s going to have to be the one to tell him. It’s going to destroy him a little and she doesn’t want to be the cause. He spent so much time during the War fighting and second-guessing Count Dooku’s next move, cleaning up in the wake of his destruction and pursuing him across a hundred different borders. And he never did get him. Obi-Wan left the JEDI before he could do that. He stepped back from the War and became a _scholar_ of all things, and one of his greatest rivals remained at large, sowing pain and sorrow everywhere he touched. Ahsoka knows it burns Obi-Wan to this day that he let that happen.

She almost pities Dooku when Obi-Wan learns he’s had a hand in their kidnapping.

“So what happens now?”

The doctor – nurse, healer? – sighs and moves to tuck the blankets into a neat corner at the end of the bed. “I keep you here as long as possible. Which will likely be until this evening when the Commander comes to check on you and forces my hand in giving you a clean bill of health. Then you go and join the others, and your induction begins.”

“Oh.”

“Until then, you rest. You’re going to need it little one.”

“I’m not that little.”

The woman just smiles. “Eat.”

For once, Ahsoka finds she isn’t hungry, not under the dire light of recent revelations. But she’s also not stupid enough to turn away such a gift. She eats.


	3. Chapter 3

The woman – Healer Che – is right; someone comes for her before dinner and she’s escorted out of the infirmary and downstairs onto the road below, passed groups of mask-clad CIS soldiers and into the old office building opposite. Inside is a warren of hastily installed partitions and bodies bustling around. Her escort guides her to a flight of stairs at the rears of the building and up to the third floor where the dormitories are.

She’s left in a long, thin room at the end of the corridor. Six bunk beds have been shoved against one of the walls and there’s barely any room to walk between them. Only three of the beds are occupied, all by girls around her own age, perhaps slightly older. They keep their distance from each other and nobody says anything as she sits down on the nearest bed, exhausted from her short walk.

The sheets smell of must and damp, and the yellow sweat stains on the pillow make her turn her nose up in disgust. She shoves it underneath the bed, wincing when she pulls her arm too vigorously, and then sits on the edge of her mattress. It’s something she was taught by the JEDI, to sit and observe her surroundings, to detail every little thing in case some of it is useful later and she finds herself falling back into the habit to calm her nerves.

Besides the door, the only other possibly exit is the window at the end of the room – which is really only just wide enough to be a corridor – but a cage protects the outside of it, and by extension stops anyone inside from escaping that way, not without force.

The other girls don’t even look at her. They don’t really do anything. One of them is feigning sleep, while an another just stares at the ceiling, not even bothering to pretend. The third is sat crossed legged with her back to Ahsoka, in a meditative pose that reminds her of many hours in the creche where their minders would try and convince them to sit still or her classes that focused on disciplining the mind. It’s a practice Obi-Wan swears by, but she’s never really got the hang of, even with his guidance.

“Hello?” she tries, because there’s nothing else she can do.

The first two ignore her, but the third twitches from her meditation and turns to look at her.

“Ahsoka?” Barriss Offee asks and something warm crosses her face. “It _is_ you.”

Barriss jumps off her bed and is in front of Ahsoka in seconds, taking her hands in her own and clenching their fingers together. It’s as close to a hug as one JEDI will ever give another, and Ahsoka appreciates it for the warm greeting it is.

“Not that it’s not good to see you,” her old friend says, “but what in the name of the Force are you doing here?”

“Anakin and me were captured.”

Barriss hums sympathetically. “Anakin is here?”

She is older than Ahsoka by a few years, but the communal raising of children in the creche had ensured those years between them meant very little and they’d been close. Then Ahsoka had been adopted – which had been a scandal all on its own, because you simply didn’t get adopted out of the Academy and she still doesn’t know how Obi-Wan managed it – and Barriss had begun to prepare for her final trials and exams and they’d drifted apart.

And now she’s here, at the end of the world.

“He is.”

Barriss has never known Anakin personally, but everyone at the Academy knew of him in some capacity. He had a bit of a _reputation_.

“It’s a small world,” Barriss says. There’s worry behind her eyes, but she hides it behind a smile and pulls the edges of her headscarf straight to keep her hands busy. Ahsoka pats the space on the bed besides her and she sits down.

“So, what’s the deal with this place?” Ahsoka eyes the other girls somewhat wearily. They’re far too catatonic for her to trust, and she suspects this place has already inserted its talons into their minds.

“They call it a training camp, but they mostly use us for menial labour until they’re sure they’ve broken us and then they take us somewhere else for proper training, but nobody I’ve spoken too seems to know where exactly.”

Ahsoka grimaces. “How long have you been here?”

“A few weeks.” Barriss reaches up to play with one of the slats in the bed above. “It’s not so bad, as long as you keep your head down. Mostly, I don’t think they know I exist. Which is for the best.”

“That’s awful.”

That’s life, or it seems to be at the moment. She really, really hopes Obi-Wan is already looking for them because she’s not sure Anakin is capable of comprehending what it means to keep his head down, let alone actually being able to do so. She needs to find him before he tries to find her and people start to get hurt – namely _them_.

“Are there any activities where we do something together? I need to find my brother.”

Barriss snorts knowingly. “Meals are communal and if we’re out in the fields then that’s usually together too.

“Out in the fields?”

“You’ll see.”

 _That_ doesn’t sound like a good thing.

Somewhere in the distance there’s a shrill whistle and the girl on the far bed straightens minutely.

Barriss sighs. “Dinner time.”

Ahsoka follows behind her as she leads the way to the end of the corridor, through the steadily growing crowd of worn and ill-mannered recruits. Elbows jostle for room and she has to duck more than one aimed hit to her face before they can join what passes as the queue at the end. She peers out in front, trying to find Anakin, but for once it seems he’s not the tallest person in the room.

She turns to Barriss. “Can you see him?”

Neither of them are particularly tall, and it’s all they can do to stake a claim to their place in the line. Anakin is nowhere in sight. Barriss shakes her head and shrinks back when someone behind her tries to make eye contact.

Ahsoka keeps looking as they’re herded into the canteen by the force of the bodies behind them, but she doesn’t have any luck. It seems for once, Anakin isn’t the centre of either attention or an explosion, so she bides her time and waits dutifully.

Inside is a huge hall created by the haphazard demolition of multiple walls to create a long room filled with tables and chairs, and a bench at the far end next to a large vat of something she can smell drifting their way. They queue along the wall and shuffle closer to the bench, and she takes the time to search the room for Anakin to no avail. To the side is a table of chipped bowls – all mismatched, of course – and she follows suit when Barriss takes one. The man behind the bench ladles something thick and lumpy into their bowls from the vat.

They pause at the back of the hall, searching for an unoccupied stretch of table so that no-one bothers them and Anakin can find them easily. Ahsoka cranes her neck, trying to find her brother before they sit down.

But her finds her first.

“Hey, Snips!” he hisses.

She spins round to find a very bedraggled and very displeased looking Anakin, staring at her with relief. Ahsoka grabs Barriss’ arm and guides her to the table to sit opposite him.

“Are you alright?” he asks a little desperately.

“I’m fine she promises,” and she _is_ , “just sore.”

“You got _shot_ ,” he accuses.

“You bated them,” she challenges. “You threw a _chair_ at them.”

He mumbles something she doesn’t catch and she feels someone brush against her back, too close for comfort, but there isn’t much room here either and people struggle to shuffle between the tables.

“You got shot?” Barriss asks.

Ahsoka waves her off. “Only a little.”

Barriss’ eye flash to her bandaged arm and back again.

Ahsoka pointedly doesn’t entertain her and instead turns to Anakin. “Skyguy, this is Barriss, a friend from back at the home.”

Anakin pauses, gleaning her meaning. They don’t know who’s listening or watching them and she doesn’t know if he knows about the CIS yet.

“It’s a pleasure to meet someone with similar life experiences,” he says, uncharacteristically diplomatic.

“Likewise.”

Ahsoka shakes the bowl and watches with distaste as the greyish-porridge jiggles.

“Get used to it,” Barriss tells her, “that’ll be every meal you eat for the foreseeable future.”

She knows better than to complain about the food available, especially when she _can_ confirm her next meal, but there’s something innate about the need to express just how disgusting it looks. There aren’t any spoons to eat with and she copies Barriss and brings the bowl to her mouth and _drinks_ it. Which, yeah, that makes it _worse_.

“So what did you get up to while I was sleeping?”

Anakin’s scowl deepens. “Cold showers and introductions.”

Ooph. Sounds like she missed out with her trip to the infirmary.

“Learn anything?” she asks carefully.

He shakes his head. “Nothing helpful. Other than they’re a lot more organised than any other raiders we’ve met, but I think that’s obvious.”

“Anakin,” she says carefully, making sure she has his attention and that nobody nearby appears to be listening. “That’s because they’re not raiders, they’re the Separatists.”

He raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “Not the time to develop a sense of humour, Snips.”

“My sense of humour is just fine.”

“Uhuh, that’s why you sound like Obi-Wan.”

She wishes she had something to throw at him. “It’s true,” she insists, “the healer told me.”

“She’s right,” Barriss adds quietly, “that’s why I’m here.”

The scowl on Anakin’s face gives way to something far more serious, something angry. “They can’t be. They’re just as dead as the Republic.”

Barriss shakes her head. “Listen, there’s something I need to tell you, but I can’t risk it here, not with so many people. They have ears everywhere. _Trust no-one_ , they plant snitches in the ranks too, I’ve seen it.”

Ahsoka has never seen her friend half so serious or painfully sombre, and she reaches under the table to squeeze her hands in reassurance.

“I’m glad you’re here, despite everything,” Barriss whispers, “it’s been so long since I’ve seen anyone.”

Ahsoka gives her a smile, but it can’t reach her eyes because she can’t agree. She wishes she were back at the farmhouse or Obi-Wan was here, because he always knows what to do and she could really do with some guidance about now. He’d have calm words and soothing reassurances and she’s never really had to appreciate how much she relies on him for that before, because he’s always been there for her. Even when he was deployed, he always used to stress he was only a comm away if she absolutely needed him.

The food may look awful and taste not that much better, but she is full when she finishes it, which is the first time in a while she’s been able to say that.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahsoka learns that the picture is much, much larger than she though

They’re forcibly separated from Anakin by _bedtime_ and Ahsoka feels like she’s back in the creche again. Barriss moves to the bed next to hers as the other girls slip into bed and all four of them settle down for the night to sleep. There’s no light to turn off and no-one bothers to start any arguments about wanting the door open when she shuts it – she wants as many layers between her and the CIS as possibly, thank you very much – so maybe it isn’t like the creche at all.

Despite the silence and the dark, and the knowledge that for now at least she’s safe, she can’t sleep. It has nothing to do with the smell of the sheets or the harsh sobs from the other end of the room, and everything to do with the thoughts niggling at the back of her head. She’s just resigning herself to the fact that’s not sleeping at all tonight when she realises,she’s not the only one.

“Are you still awake?” Barriss hisses at her.

“Of course.”

“Come on, I need to show you something.”

She’s silhouetted by the window as she looms over Ahsoka’s bed, making no sound as she waits patiently for Ahsoka to come to her senses. She’s acting as if sneaking around an enemy camp in the middle of the night is routine, maybe even expected, and it’s the level of thoughtless righteousness she’d expect of a JEDI.

But then, she supposes, Barriss would have been a commander before the end. It’s ingrained into her, she hasn’t seen the outside like Ahsoka has. Barriss thinks that it’s _sensible_ to go looking for trouble, like Obi-Wan does, and Ahsoka doesn’t know many English professors but she’s sure they don’t usually end up in quite so many _incidents_.

“Now?”

“Yes now,” Barriss huffs, a touch impatiently. “Nobody will miss us.”

Ahsoka hesitates, because she has enough common sense to know that bating CIS soldiers is a _terrible_ way to stay unnoticed, but then she remembers her promise to gather more information to relay to Obi-Wan when he comes. “Fine.”

She swings her feet over the side of the bed and slips on her boots, wincing when she makes more sound than Barriss. It seems she out of practice. There hadn’t been any need to sneak around when she began living with Obi-Wan because he’d _trusted_ her. Maybe he should have kept her on her toes instead.

The door creaks when they open it but no-one else in the room stirs (though that doesn’t really mean much because they don’t react to anything anyway), and they slip out into the corridor. Barriss leads her to the stair well at the end, pausing to lean down over the railings and check the coast is clear before she heads down.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

“Not helpful.”

They’re almost at the bottom when the sound of feet fall above them. They both freeze at the sound of voices and Barriss’ eyes go wide before she grabs Ahsoka’s wrist and drags her down the last few steps and into the basement below. It’s cold down here and the air is stale because the air conditioning hasn’t worked in a long time. The concrete is wet thanks to the condensing of vapor from people breathing, and Ahsoka tries not to cringe away from the moisture when Barriss pulls her behind a pillar and the exposed skin of her arm brushes the wall.

A pair of guards saunter lazily passed, arguing about stakes for something she can’t quite make out. They’re complacent, with their weapons slung across their backs, clearly expecting no resistance of any kind and Ahsoka has to repress the impulse to take advantage. Even armed, they wouldn’t get far. She’s seen how many Seppies there are between her and the gates and the numbers do not work in her favour (she doesn’t think about how they don’t work in Obi-Wan’s either).

Cautiously, Barriss peers around the pillar before stepping more confidently into the corridor.

“This way.”

The entire place gives Ahsoka an unsettling feeling. She can feel the maleficence hanging in the air, an unspoken threat for those who step out of line. But down here, the feeling is amplified, concentrated in the still air. The hairs on the back of her neck prickle in paranoia, and while she trusts Barriss, she also questions her sanity.

It’s obvious she’s been here before, because she leads the way with a clear purpose, knowing which corners to peek around and which to skip. It’s would almost be suspicious if Ahsoka could fathom a motive beyond foolish curiosity.

Barriss pauses by a small alcove, flattening herself against the wall.

“We can’t actually get as close as I’d like,” she explains, “but we can get close enough.”

She peels a grate off the wall by her feet and promptly crawls inside, murmuring for Ahsoka to pull it back across behind her. Ahsoka sighs and climbs in after her. The vent can barely contain her knees and elbows – she’s the right side of underweight to be plain _gangly_ – and crawling reminds her of the assault course in the Academy’s playing fields. And it makes her thighs _ache_.

“Try to make less noise,” Barriss whispers and Ahsoka has to swallow the scathing reply that wants to break free.

“Sorry.”

Barriss navigates the building’s ventilation system in the same way she does its corridors; with confident precision and the utmost caution. It’s so very _JEDI_ _like_ , that it almost makes Ahsoka rue the day she escaped the Academy and all the prospects she lost.

It makes her so very conscious of how unlike Barris she is. Ahsoka grumbles something about not being a JEDI (it sounds petulant and maybe even a little false because the Academy didn’t count for nothing, regardless of whether she was knighted and given a rank. She agreed with their philosophy and their creed, but like Obi-Wan she hadn’t agreed with their interpretation of it. So she’d left early, she’d walked away. Which means her training is fundamentally lacking but it’s not non-existent.)

“Here.”

Barriss stops above a grate, shuffling past it to give Ahsoka a better view. Below is a room, sparse beyond the table in the middle. A map of excruciating detail has been lain out, with figurines of wooden block-carvings detailing what could generously be interpreted as troop movements. It’s empty, but evidently regularly used and she can feel it contains the most life of the entire base.

“Where are we?”

“Their war room,” Barriss tells her. “I keep coming to look, but their updates are slow. Communications aren’t what they used to be.”

Ahsoka resists the urge to snort. “I imagine not.”

She’s about to ask why Barriss has brought her here – it’s fascinating and all but she’s not really sure how this helps either of them – when there’s the sound of a lock disengaging and the door opens. The both of them freeze, unsure how to proceed, and an older woman enters the room, first poking her head around the door before daring to venture in. When she sees it’s empty, she steps inside, quietly closing the door behind her and approaching the table.

There are a few strands of grey around her temples, but the rest of her hair is an earthy brown bound in a long plait down her back. Her demeanour is resolute, if reserved and Ahsoka gets the impression she’s exactly where she means to be. The way she studies the map gives the impression she understands it – a novelty given the caricatures that adorn it.

A war map implies there’s a war to track and there are coherent sides to observe, but nothing she’s seen have shown that to be the case. There are the CIS and there’s no-one to oppose them. They have free rein over the remnants of the Republic, and anything else that indicates otherwise is nothing but false hope. It makes someone sneaking into a Separatist War Room all the more confusing, because it implies they have enemies that continue to breathe.

“Why are we here?” She whispers urgently. There’s something she’s missing and she doesn’t like being kept in the dark.

“So that if something happens to me, someone else knows.” That makes her sound an awful lot like a JEDI, and all the sacrifice and intrigue that come with it. It also manages to do that thing Obi-Wan does where it seems like he’s answering the question, but really gives nothing away. She doesn’t even think it’s on purpose.

“Knows _what_?”

Barriss opens her mouth to answer, and had she managed then maybe many, many things would have ended up being different. But she doesn’t manage and Ahsoka doesn’t find out what she intends to impart for many, many more perils and the world ends up being all the more different for it.

There’s the sound of a loud footfalls at the exact same moment the woman’s head whips up in there direction – Ahsoka realises belatedly, because her boots squeal against the metal as she backs up – and Barriss shuts her mouth abruptly as she makes eye contact with the woman. Panic breaks through the lines of the woman’s face and Barriss melts in sympathy.

“Move back,” she hisses at Ahsoka, so she can lift the grate.

The woman looks between the door and the vent with a rapidly solidifying determination as the footsteps get closer. She makes her decision and steps up onto the war table to get the leverage she needs to pull herself up into the vent shaft.

“An enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Barriss says cryptically and the woman nods her agreement.

“Any enemy of the Separatists is my friend.”

There seems to be an understanding that passes between them and Ahsoka feels a little like an outsider. The woman pushes the grate back into place as the footsteps reach the door, nodding in silent thanks to both of them. Ahsoka doesn’t know how to respond and so looks down in time to glimpse two mask-clad CIS soldiers entering the room, proceeding a man she knows from old news reels to be Dooku.

The _Supreme Leader_ of the Separatists.

 _Here_.

It’s all so bizarre that it feels surreal, and she risks leaning forwards over the grate to get a better look. He doesn’t look as foreboding or _dangerous_ as the stories have led her to believe, though there is an electric aura of death surrounding him that is at odds with his greying hair and grandfatherly appearance.

He leans over the table, hands resting on the edges, and stares as it for a long moment. Then he moves one of the wooden blocks from near the centre of the map to the very edge. Ahsoka squints to try and make out what it means; if her suspicions are correct and the black outlines mark CIS compounds throughout the town, then there are _many_ of them.

Which makes absolutely no sense. This town isn’t exactly small, but then neither is it large. It’s certainly no city. So why are the Separatists so densely concentrated here? It’s no keystone to Coruscant’s greater metropolis and it’s close enough to the border region to have passed through enemy hands on more than one occasion. She _knows_ her history. Tactically it should be inconsequential.

 _Tactically_ , the CIS shouldn’t need to protect themselves behind heavily fortified walls because there shouldn’t be anyone to oppose them.

“I want this company to leave for the Station as soon as light breaks,” Dooku tells one of his companions, tapping a block on the map.

His voice is deeper than recordings have led her to believe, but it doesn’t inspire the grim terror that she’s always seen in Obi-Wan’s eyes at the mention of his name. She _knows_ what he’s capable of and she _knows_ she should be so very afraid in his presence, but she finds she _isn’t_.

“Yes, My Lord.”

“And make sure there isn’t any… _trouble_ this time. I don’t want a repeat of what happened to the last reinforcements.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

“No prisoners, not this time. Our enemy is far too wilful and arrogant to truly serve us.”

Ahsoka knows her eyes are wide, but she’s trying to contemplate who exactly is left that could stand up to the CIS in any capacity.

Dooku continues to stare at the map for a while, his face thoughtful. Then his attention falls onto the scuffed edge of paper, just below the vent, where the woman pulled herself up. She shuffles backwards in alarm as his eyes travel up to the grate and she doesn’t think he saw her, but she definitely made a noise.

“Go!” Barriss shouts.

Ahsoka doesn’t need to be told twice, she shuffles backwards as fast as she can, using the junction behind her to turn around and takes off at a frantic scampering crawl. She hears as Dooku orders people after them and she can hear the woman close behind her. There’s a squeal as the grate is shoved upwards from underneath and then a cry from Barriss as someone grabs her leg.

Ahsoka hesitates and the woman behind her knocks into her with a growl of irritation. She can just look back far enough to see that Barriss is there one moment and gone the next. Her name dies in Ahsoka’s throat, as she processes that her friend has been dragged into he room below.

“Go!” the woman hisses, “there’s nothing we can do for her.”

Ahsoka doesn’t budge.

“Don’t make her sacrifice in vain.”

She final corrals herself and with a silent apology to Barriss lurches forwards. Impossibly, she manages to navigate all the way back to the original grate and shoulder it off the wall with more force than necessary. Both she and the woman tumble out into the corridor. There’s a shout from the far end, and the woman is already pushing past her, sprinting away.

Ahsoka debates for a fraction of a second before following. There’s no point replacing the grate because the CIS already know they’re there. The woman seems to know where’s she’s going and when they reach the stairs she takes them two at a time. It’s miraculous that they meet no-one before they get to the dorms, but the sounds behind them and the shouting promise retribution should they be caught.

The woman rounds on her outside of room Besh-four-three. “I was never here, we never saw each other. Do you understand?”

“She was my friend,” Ahsoka hisses through bitter tears.

“Do you _understand_?”

“Yes,” she grits.

Then the woman is gone and Ahsoka is stood alone in the corridor, the noises getting closer. Her own room is the last on the left and she’s never wanted to be any where less than amongst the vacant faces of feigned sleep. So she slips into Anakin’s dorm – he’s awake, of course he is – and he says nothing as she curls up against him and sobs into his chest, praying they don’t know it was her.


	5. Chapter 5

Seeing how the food is prepared does nothing to make it more appealing. They have her on vegetable duty (it doesn’t escape her notice they have a regular supply of fresh greens), and she can’t help but feel it’s a little stupid of them to hand her a knife. Whenever no-one is looking and the ‘chef’ is busy, she slips some of the strange twisted roots into her pocket for later, because they might be purple and tart, but they’re _food_ and it’s not an opportunity to be missed.

It’s the most she’s stepped out of line since the other night. She’d slipped back into her own dorm before first light, ignoring the dead gaze of the girl opposite her and Barriss’ empty bed, and waited for the knell of the wake-up call. She’s kept her head carefully down since.

And Barriss hasn’t returned.

Last night she’d nearly convinced herself to go back down into the basement, back to the scene of their crime, but then there had been footsteps outside and she’d lost her nerve. Because there’s sure to be more security there now, and they must still be looking for accomplices. Which makes it’s a terrible idea for her to stick out. So she stays put, steals food and prays Barriss is brought back soon.

The chef shouts over the steam and bent heads for the diced roots. She hurriedly chops the last few and carries over the box, side stepping the wild aim of the boy skinning a large thing with whiskers, to tip it as directed into the huge pot simmering on the range. Then she’s sent back to deal with the things that may or may not be some kind of cabbage. The knife is too blunt to cut through the woody stems, and she’s soon sweating from the effort and the rising heat from the stove. There’s a number of caterpillar-worm-maggots hiding in the leaves, but she leaves them in because protein is hard to come by and they haven’t told her _not_ to. She can just imagine the look of horror Obi-Wan’s would send her way, even now food is scarce.

It makes her even more homesick.

The kitchen is hot without any of the fans functioning and the great range inefficiently vents heat almost everywhere but the heating elements. It’s been converted to work on canisters of gas and she has no idea where the Seppies have managed to source _those_ from. It hints that they have supply lines that are not only intact, but _developed_ too, and isn’t _that_ a worrying concept.

She ignores the heat, and tries to focus on the task at hand, but inevitably her mind wanders back to the strange woman who was so insistent they’d never met. She’d clearly been doing something to undermine the CIS, and it makes Ahsoka restless with _need_. Inaction has never suited her and neither has slinking passively into the background, but she isn’t stupid enough to think she can confront Dooku alone, without any kind of plan. Which is more than she can say for Anakin; she’d explained to him what had happened, and she’d been the one to calm _him_ down and stop _him_ from running into the basement, fuelled by too many conflicting emotions and a fatal can-do attitude.

She _hates_ not doing anything, but equally she doesn’t know _what_ to do. It’s all the more frustrating because she knows the woman holds the answers to a great many of her questions. Ahsoka would love to know what the woman was doing in Dooku’s war room (she’d love to know what _she and Barriss_ were doing in there as well, but that isn’t going to happen any time soon), because whatever they were looking for has to be important enough to ignore the _substantial_ risk of being caught. There isn’t even the opportunity to confront the woman because Ahsoka hasn’t seen her since, and it’s unclear if that’s because they have wildly conflicting schedules or because she’s being intentionally avoided.

When the pot of … stew? (soup? broth?) is simmering, Ahsoka is sent upstairs into the dining room with stacks of bowls alongside the other girls from her dorm. There’s another dorm sent with them, Esk-four-four, that seems to be made up entirely of lithe twenty-somethings. It hasn’t escaped her notice that they’ve all been profiled, and that the trainers ( _overseers_ ) in the yard treat them differently because of it. It makes her think of Cody and his explanation of how he organised his battalions for the best results, because you didn’t want scouts without endurance or infantry without strength. He’d told her how to utilise each and every natural advantage among soldiers – how best to structure an army.

And with the uncomfortable knowledge they’re all in the tender care of the Separatists, it isn’t a hard leap to realise _why_. The irony that she escaped joining the GAR only to be forcibly drafted into the Separatists isn’t lost on her.

She trails behind the group to avoid the awkward attempts at conversation the other dorm is making with hers (they’re all so much more _lively,_ and she can’t help but wonder _why_ ), which is how she sees the shadow slip out of the cover of the stairwell when no-one else does. She slows her pace but doesn’t look directly at them, letting whoever it is think she hasn’t seen them.

There’s a notice board stuck to the wall and she wanders over, pretending to inspect a faded flier advertising a dance recital, schooling her face into something nostalgic. It allows her to glance sideways without being obvious and she sees the shadow – a man with sandy hair – dart the other way down the corridor with a one-track purpose.

As far as she knows, everyone but those on kitchen-duty are exercising in the yard, and she doesn’t recognise the man from earlier. Neither does he have the bearing or the mask of one of the Seppies. Which means he’s _definitely_ up to something.

After a moments debate in which she ultimately decides she can’t afford _not_ to know what he’s doing – because if he’s not a Separatist then he’s an _ally_ – she places the bowls on the floor under the notice board and follows him as quietly as she can. He’s already at the end of the corridor when she rounds the corner and she risks running to make up the distance. He leads her deeper into the building, to the eastern most wing, through the open plan office spaces that have been converted into large indoor training areas full of matts and crude practise dummies, towards the rooms used for storage at the back. The few times he looks back (in _suspicion_ ) she ducks behind the nearest object or flattens herself against the closest wall and somehow he _doesn’t_ see her.

He slows to a less frantic walk in front of her, and she crouches behind the ruins of one of the dividing walls, keeping him in sight through a large puncture hole in the plaster as he greets a familiar face. She’d half expected him to meet the woman, but instead she finds _Healer Che_ is waiting for him in a dead end, outside one of the supply cupboards. Which is _interesting_.

“And to what do I owe this dubious pleasure?” the healer asks. “I’ve had more direct introductions.”

“I’m with the Resistance, Ma’am.”

The healer’s entire demeanour changes, and she rises to her impressive full height, pulling her shoulders back. There’s a confidence about her posture that wasn’t there a moment ago, something she’d been lacking – no, not lacking, _hiding_ – from those around her. Ahsoka knows someone making themselves unnoticeable when she sees one, and besides that brief moment of fire when she spat _Separatists_ in the infirmary, Ahsoka would never have guessed Healer Che was more than she seemed.

Ahsoka doesn’t know what the Resistance is, exactly, but if it’s as self-explanatory as it sounds then it can’t be a bad thing. It’s impressive there’s anyone left to oppose the Separatists at all, and she naturally wants in. The idea that the Separatists are in her home _burns_ , because wherever they go people die. The Republic may have had its failures, but she still believed in the democracy it stood for, thought it worth fighting for. She’s still JEDI enough to want to help.

“Is that so?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

What really confuses her is the man’s deference to Healer Che, like he respects and knows who she is – not that he shouldn’t, it’s just there’s a _story_ there.

“Then I assume you’re here for a reason?”

“The Resistance has a vested interest in ensuring this particular facility is destroyed.”

Healer Che nods, her face unreadable. “I can see why,” she says dryly. “We hardly need more trouble running around.”

Is she high up in their ranks, is that why he calls her Ma’am? Do they _have_ ranks? Ahsoka can’t imagine they’re that organised; if they were, she would have heard of them before or seen evidence of their existence. If this _Resistance_ is of any real consequence, there should be echoes of their work everywhere. And they should let people know what they’re resisting, that the Separatists are _here_ , in Coruscant.

“There’s a plan. People are waiting on the outside for us to distract the Seppies and give them the chance to breach the compound.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Have you seen the crates of sand they drag across the front gates?” Healer Che nods at him. “Smadis and I are going to fill them with potassium nitrate, and-”

“Smadis?”

“There are four of us, if you help. Smadis is my ensign. There would have been five but one of us is MIA.”

Ahsoka makes herself let go of the edge of the wall before the plaster cuts her fingers. She gets the feeling they’re talking about Barriss. If Barriss was with this Resistance, it puts things into a completely different perspective. She’d been so keen to show Ahsoka that war room, and there _had_ been something she’d wanted to tell both her and Anakin. Maybe she’d wanted to recruit the both of them.

“What are you waiting on?”

“A signal from outside that tells us they have everything in place.”

Ahsoka squints at the man’s outline, trying to place his accent. It’s not Coruscanti, that’s for sure. But then Coruscant is ( _was_?) the capital of the Republic; _many_ people from all over came to live here, so that doesn’t exactly narrow it down.

“And what does this signal look like?”

“That we don’t know, but Fett-”

Ahsoka’s ears perk up. She _knows_ that name.

“Fett?” Healer Che asks, alert. Apparently, she knows the name too. “Which one? Did they find the Mand’alor?”

The man shakes his head. “Not yet. He’s still suspected KIA after the Purge.”

For the first time Healer Che vents her frustration with a sharp exhale, and reaches up to curl a wisp of stray hair behind her ear.

Ahsoka has never met the Mand’alor, but Cody had been his son. She doesn’t know anything about any Purge and the familiar dread settles in the pit of her stomach when she thinks about what might have happened to him. Because a purge cannot be a _good_ thing.

She worries about the fate of everyone she cares about and this is far from the first time she’s _wondered_ about where Cody is now (because he _has_ to still be alive). She hasn’t seen him in years, not since everything was formalised and she moved in with Obi-Wan and Anakin, because things between her dads- between _them_ had been tense. The breakup hadn’t been kind to either of them. She had to live with Obi-Wan’s shell before he pulled himself together (before he got better at hiding it), and she can’t imagine Cody was in a better place.

She’d wanted to reach out to him, and almost had, but in the end she hadn’t wanted to hurt either of them more by reminding them of the other. Secretly she’d hoped they’d work it out, but they never even _talked_ and she doesn’t know the finer details of the breakup, but she saw the fallout and she knows it was _bad_. She knows it was Cody that had walked away, and as much as she rues what she lost, the future she could have had, she can’t blame him.

Obi-Wan had pretended to be dead and then risen like one of _the_ Dead with nothing but an inadequate apology. _She’d_ be mad if that were her partner. Hell, she _had_ been mad and she’d have stayed mad for far longer had she not suddenly been free of the Academy and dealing with the real world for the first time. Anakin had been angry enough for the both of them, anyway.

“Which Fett?”

The man shifts uncomfortably and Ahsoka can _hope_.

“Agent Arla Fett.”

Ahsoka’s hope sinks like a stone. She’s never even _heard_ of that name.

It doesn’t sound like Healer Che has either. “She’s leading the operation?”

There’s the sound of footsteps further down the hallway, passed the both of them, and the Healer’s head whips round almost instantaneously towards the threat. She nods in dismissal to the man, and turns on her heal _towards_ the noise. The man takes off back the way he came, streaking passed Ahsoka without registering her presence at all. She counts to ten, enough time that she sees the Healer disappearing into a room further down the corridor and the footsteps get dangerously close, and then she runs after the man.

She has a lot to tell Anakin.

**Author's Note:**

> These chapters will be a bit shorter than part 1, but I should be able to update them more regularly (at least, that's the idea) while still updating every Tuesday for ISMTIH x


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